To edit the film opening I used Premier Pro. Within this programme, there is a large range of editing tools and devices that allowed me to perfect the final product. The following is a description of how I edited the opening and what tools I used.
First, I uploaded our footage, text, the company logo and other secondary images (Such as the BBFC Certificate) into Premier pro and watched the unedited film to make sure that all of the footage was there and editable. The audio in the film was very distracting to the Mise-En-Scene of the film as at points you could hear the camera focusing; Therefore, I decided to mute the raw audio and later choose an ominous soundtrack and other sound effects to later add to the film opening.
I then began editing the film. I started by choosing specific parts of the opening footage to cut and replace with cut-off scenes that held credits such as the name of Actors, etc. I used the cut tool in Premier Pro to do so - I made the cuts at points in the footage where the camera was trying to focus so that our overall footage looked as clean and polished as possible. I decided to keep a few of the moments where the camera was focusing in the overall film as I felt that they added to the ominous Mise-En-Scene.
After the footage was cut and credit scenes were implemented into the timeline, I added default fade transitions into the cut sections of the film so that there were not quick cut transitions between scenes. This added a flow to the opening which kept the creepy atmosphere. As the default transition's time frame was 0:25 seconds, I had to extend the time to 1:25 seconds. This allowed the fade transition to be seen properly and added to the ominous atmosphere.
Next, after the primary footage was in place, I added the secondary images to the film opening. The introduction consisted of the BBFC Certificate, the company logo and the title. The BBFC Certificate is shown on screen for multiple seconds along side the logo and the title. After a certain amount of time, the Certificate and logo faded out leaving the title of the opening on screen. The title then fades out and the opening footage starts.
During the cuts in between the main footage, there are small second long segments that have been composed specifically for credits. In these scenes, there are blank spaces and within these spaces, I have added the names and roles of my group. The text I used was a very sharp, Gothic font coloured red. The text itself looked out of place of the scenes; I, therefore, added dimension to the text by adding drop shadow at a 45-degree angle to blend the text into the scenes. To further experiment, I added a keyframe onto one of the credit scenes: This key frame made the text travel from one side of the frame to the next and made the opening a bit more interesting.
At the end of the footage, I added a different logo to cooperate all of the groups work into the final film. This logo fades into a more detailed title screen which then fades to black.
Following this was the addition of audio - I used two different audio clips within the opening. One of the audio clips was a non-copyrighted, sinister music piece that overall tied all of the visuals together and made the footage more frightening. The music clip was continuous throughout the opening. I also used a separate audio clip which was a woman's scream. The scream is featured at the start of the footage when the original title screen fades into the footage - This is also when the music clip begins to play.
Afterwards, I watched over all of the footage and noticed two things that I felt would distract from the Mise-En-Scene. In the entire film, there is a warm hue as the film used a lot of candle light and yellow toned lights. I, therefore, simply, colour-corrected the entire film to a white hue. This gave the film a cool colour tone and, in effect, created a more chilling atmosphere.
Furthermore, a segment of the opening was filmed outside where garden lights were used; These lights have a white hue and overall made that particular segment too bright. To fix this brightness problem, I added an oval shaped vignette over the footage. The vignette was placed in the upper right third of the frame. The vignette darkened the edges of the frame, fixing the brightness issue, and also highlighted a key scene within the footage.
I then, finally, re-watched the footage and felt that the project was ready for rendering. The finished, treated opening was rendered specifically for a YouTube viewing and uploaded to YouTube.
Written by Timothy Amaryllis
